Howard Reich, 9:52 a.m. CDT, September 2, 2013
You know a jazz festival has ventured into unusual territory when Lupe Fiasco eases onto the stage.
That happened Sunday night as the 35th annual Chicago Jazz Festival was approaching the finish line, the Chicago rapper making an unannounced cameo with the Robert Glasper Experiment – a band that won a Grammy earlier this year for best R&B album (for "Black Radio").
Did any of this have anything to do with jazz? Not much. Did that matter? Not to the throngs that cheered Fiasco's brief, joyful appearance or Glasper's soulful, plugged-in, high-volume, dance-inducing music.
It certainly made for an eclectic finale, the last night of the fest an unlikely mix of styles, influences and traditions – just like jazz itself. Some moments were more satisfying than others, and the last evening of the fest didn't match earlier high points: Saturday's brilliant set from singer Gregory Porter, Friday's profundities from Wadada Leo Smith and Thursday's experiments from Jack DeJohnette.
But the wildly unpredictable last day of the festival seemed an apt metaphor for an event that was trying something new: a move from Grant Park to Millennium Park. Not everything goes smoothly when you're taking a chance, which is half the fun.
That said, Glasper's band – though rousing much of the audience and delivered at an unassailably high musical level – sounded as if it had wandered into the wrong festival when it appeared at the Pritzker Pavilion. You could be enchanted by vocalist Casey Benjamin's high-pitched cries and intrigued by Glasper's fluid right-hand lines on keyboards without being convinced that this performance fit this event.
Certainly many hard-core jazz listeners would have considered the trance-like nature of Glasper's performance a bit tepid, the backbeats relentless, the reverb overdone. And some "Black Radio" fans posting on Facebook during the concert found Glasper restrained by the Jazz Fest setting.
Read more: http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-ent-0903-jazz-finale-20130903-7,0,364373.column
0 Comments:
Post a Comment